Tuesday, 13 December 2011

Hizb ut Tahrir and the Arab Spring –The Shattering of an Illusion in the Heartland

It was the time that all members of HT had been talking of for 60 years. How a popular revolt against the Western supported dictatorships in the Arab world would demonstrate their affiliation to Islam, the party and the Caliphate. Instead, the advent of the Arab spring brought home some uncomfortable truths for members of HT throughout the world. Having been led to believe since the 1960’s that HT had built a popular base for its ideas and only the support of the armed forces remained absent in its quest to establish the Islamic Caliphate in the Arab heartland, success was seen to be within their grasp. However, the Arab spring shattered this illusion and laid bare the stark reality that no such support existed either in the Arab society or amongst the armed forces. From Tunisia, to Syria to Egypt and beyond, HT was nowhere to be seen and the masses emerged as sheep without a shepherd with only their hatred for the authoritarian regimes uniting them. Further exposure of HT’s dire situation emerged when its members embarrassingly failed to mobilise support in its stated stronghold of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Members of HT remain in denial unable to comprehend the gravity and truth of myth which prevailed only because it was impossible to negate its illusion under the veil of authoritarian leadership. Why was their no leadership over the masses in Syria and Jordan? Why could HT not mobilise support in the Sunni elements of the armed forces in Syria? And why was there no existence of HT in Egypt despite it being a strong Arab country with a history of Islamic activism both amongst the population and its armed forces?

At the heart of these questions is not the ideology of the party but the competence of its leadership. In 1997, the fitness of the leadership was challenged as was the reality of the HT’s leadership in the Arab world. The clash led to the first official split in the party with the breakaway faction recalibrating their position and maintained that HT had a lot to do before it could claim to have developed a popular base amongst the masses and no leadership for the party or ideas existed. As part of its proof it leaked an internal letter by the leader at the time, Abdul Qadeem Zaloom ,wherein he admitted that the masses had failed to respond to HT. However, instead of rectifying this position Zaloom ignored the dogmatic requirement of the party to establish a popular base and instead concentrated all efforts to seek support from the armed forces and influential elements in society in the hope of mounting a coup and directly moving to power. Consequently, no real strategy existed to transform society under the leadership of its ideas and its presence quickly diminished from society. Moreover, the quest for an army backed coup was expanded beyond the Arab world with Pakistan being the first country beyond the Arab realm to be declared a target for power in 2001. It remains to be seen whether its current leader Ata Abu Rishta will reflect on the reasons for HT’s failure in the Arab heartland, change course and capitalise on the wave of Islamist support sweeping the region.

4 comments:

This was something startling to me as well, that though many Islamic parties were working in the Arab region of the Muslim world for decades, but they were not able to comprehend and respond timely to the uprisings, giving an edge to a disparate group of people.

I suspect neither of you have ever lived in the Arab World and experienced the oppression there in post Caliphate times. The test for Hizb ut-Tahrir is now. There is a much more even intellectual playing field. These are times when the opportunity must be grasped or we be blameworthy on the Day of Resurrection!

Hizb Ata failed to identify and expose the plans of the Kuffar – a key characteristic from the adopted method of Hizb ut-Tahrir - but instead they conformed to the plan by in effect becoming a part of it, supporting it and even claiming that it was some kind of victory which was an “Islamic Awakening”. This is dangerous and tantamount to facilitating America’s plan over the Ummah, let alone exposing it to the Ummah to resist.

The Arab Spring is a part of America’s Greater Middle East Initiative designed to secularize the Muslim Ummah through so-called Islamists through whom the kufr concepts of Democracy and Civil State would not only be consolidated in the Ummah with little resistance, but would be safe-guarded by the Ummah after having been deceived into believing they sacrificed their blood for “their” revolution for these concepts. To aid and abet this in anyway by lending any type of legitimacy to the Arab Spring, even if the masses were sedated by it for now and may incur the wrath of the Ummah, instead of exposing is the biggest crime that can be perpetrated in the name of the party by any organization.

Hizb ut-Tahrir never conforms to the atmospheres created by the Kuffar but remains firmly on the truth and does not betray the idea of the party at any expense, which would transform the party from an ideological party capable of reviving the Ummah to a pragmatic one which would join the list of failed movements in the history of the Ummah.

This is further manifest in Hizb Ata’s silence over the intellectual campaign which forms the basis of the Greater Middle East Initiative, namely to make the Ummah embrace the kufr Civil State and all of its components such as Democracy and Human Rights where they deliberately refrained from high-lighting these were kufr contradictory concepts which Muslims must reject and fight.

This pragmatism caused them to attempt to persuade Muslims that Democracy was not good for Muslims, ie on a non-ideological basis although Hizb ut-Tahrir is an ideological party, rather than highlight its contradiction with our Aqeedah and its kufr nature which we must resist and fight under the same pretexts of being “shrewd” or “wise” that we hear from other pragmatist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

About Me

Lecturer in International Relations snd Political Islam at Birkbeck, University of London.Former fellow in Middle East politics at the University of Exeter. Currently researching the Global Politics of Hizb ut Tahrir.